2 DHS Checkpoint Blog Entry 12: The Sniff of Approval

On October 15, 2008 while driving Eastbound on SR86 in Southern Arizona, four armed Homeland Security agents stopped me at an internal suspicionless DHS checkpoint long enough for a drug sniffing K9 unit to sniff my vehicle absent suspicion or consent. No immigration questions were asked during this brief seizure despite the claim by the Border Patrol that these are immigration checkpoints & Supreme Court rulings requiring the purpose of such checkpoints to be limited in scope to brief immigration queries.

The location of this checkpoint was 40 miles North of the border along an East-West highway never intersecting the border. It's unknown how much illegal contraband and how many illegal border crossers entered the country to the South while the attention of four Border Patrol agents was on domestic traffic miles to the North...